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Cycling enthusiasts turn their hobby into a vocation by training as bike mechanics
Julie French, Ashland Daily Tidings via NW Jobs
After he lost his job last July as a commercial printer in New Haven, Conn., Jack Foley thought he might like to become a bicycle mechanic, a dream that brought him all the way to Ashland and the United Bicycle Institute — one of the few well-known trade schools in the country offering bike-mechanic certification.
Foley, 53, had been a bicycle commuter for 20 years and started talking to his local bike shop about turning his hobby into a vocation. The shop hires only UBI graduates, so Foley, who had never traveled farther than Philadelphia, headed west.
In just two weeks at UBI, beginning mechanics earn enough certification to qualify for entry-level professional bike-shop jobs, a turnaround that attracts bike enthusiasts from all walks of life and has kept enrollment strong as the economy crumbles, said Ron Sutphin, who owns the school with his wife, Denise.
(20 March 2009)
Is the world’s cheapest car on the road to ruin?
George Monbiot, Guardian
It’s neither as good nor as bad as we were told. Advance publicity suggested both that the Tata Nano would be the most frugal mass-produced car on earth and that everyone in India would buy one. Today Tata launched its creation.
Though it consumes less than the great majority of cars, its fuel economy is a disappointment.
On the other hand the production volumes are surprisingly small, given the breathless claims made for the Nano and its planetary impact last year. Rather than a million or more cars a year, Tata now talks of selling 100,000 this year then of switching to a new plant with a production capacity of 250,000.
It can’t be the global recession: the impact in India so far has been to reduce economic growth from 9% to a piffling 7% this year. Perhaps it’s because of India’s notorious congestion: for most short journeys, you will get there faster by bike; and this car is designed for city travel, not highways. In any case, this doesn’t look as if it will become the environmental nemesis that so many predicted — especially if, as its promoters suggest, it will displace overloaded motorbikes.
What it represents, however, is more ominous. This marks the beginning of mass private transport in the world’s second largest population.
(23 March 2009)
Related from the Guardian:
India launches ‘world’s cheapest car’
“Cars were a bubble” – General Motors
Jan Lundberg, Culture Change
These are exciting times. Finally, sales of new cars in the U.S. are falling behind the number going to the junk yards. If Mother Earth can ever rejoice, it’s now. If bicyclists who have been terrorized by oblivious motorists could ever be heartened into believing that the world is really sane and just, it is now. Livelihoods? Transportation? Solvable. Culture Change and a few other “radical” groups have been working on these issues for years, with reports, analysis and physical projects. For now, the news:
“Cars were a bubble just like the housing market was a bubble. That’s going to depress demand in subsequent years.” – Mike DiGiovanni, the head of sales analysis for General Motors.
That’s a wild statement, at least what we might have expected in our wildest dreams a year ago. The extent of the problem of car overpopulation is depicted in the graphics and photographs below and at bottom. Stay tuned, the changes have only just begun!
(18 March 2009)
Related article by Jan: Shake up and Direct the Collapse: the Macroeconomic and the Body
Personal cars must be outlawed. Auto manufacturing jobs are disappearing in the U.S. anyway, so why allow imported cars to drain our wallets and worsen the balance of trade? This rudderless nation needs to veer toward sense and wake up from the manufactured “American Dream,” and find healing for both nature and personal health.
The benefits from outlawing personal cars or bringing about their earliest demise will stimulate a great deal of economic activity of the sustainable kind. The sectors to benefit would be in all forms of alternative transportation that offer sustainability: low-tech, inexpensive, and using local resources. The work created would be local as people give up the jobs down the highway (these jobs are disappearing anyway) that are far away from one’s neighborhood.
